The website/blog of Stu Jenks. Below and to the left are categories where you can search for my photos, words and music. My e-mail is stujenks@gmail.com. Also you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, at my store at www.stujenks.org and on bandcamp. Have a blessed day, y'all.

August 18, 2017

As part of the Dia De Los Muertos show at Tohono Chul Park in Tucson, The Pamela's Baby Rocking Chair Installation is up and ready to go. The opening is Thursday, August 24 at 5:30 p.m.. The show runs until November 8th. Thanks so much to James and Karen for allowing me to be part of this show.

And this post goes out to all those folk who live outside of Southern Arizona, so you all can see and enjoy the piece too. To read the artist's statement for the piece, just click on this link.

Again, thank you everyone for your financial and emotional support this summer. It's been a tough one for me and for many. You all have helped more than you know.

July 21, 2017

This installation will be part of the upcoming Dia de los Muertos show at Tohono Chul Park, in Tucson, Arizona from August 24th, until early November. I am thrilled to bring this installation to the world for the very first time at Tohono Chul. Many thanks to James Schaub and Karen Hayes for making it all possible.

My sister Pamela Jenks has been dead six years now. Died of breast cancer at age 62. I miss her. Not all the time, but from time to time. I certainly don’t miss the selfish, mean, loud drunk she was most of her adult life, but I surely miss the considerate, kind, loving woman she became the last six months before she died. Thanks, Pamela, for being the sister I always wanted to have, those last few weeks. From soon after Pamela’s death in 2011 to the present, I’ve been taking my sister’s toddler rocking chair hither and yon. Due to her alcoholism and her general fear of the big bad world, Pamela Jenks was a virtual shut-in the last couple of decades of her life, living in my family’s falling-down old home place in Raleigh, North Carolina. I first took Pamela’s Baby Rocking Chair out and about, when I drove it and me to my sister’s grave in rural Virginia in 2012. Since then, with only a few breaks, I’ve photographed the PBRC all over the place, from the streets of New York City, to the hills of San Francisco, from the wilds of Sonora, Mexico to the snows of Utah, from the Atlantic Ocean in South Carolina to Swami’s Beach in Encinitas, California. I’ve taken Pamela’s chair to where she was too afraid to go. Then last winter, something unexpected happened. My sister’s chair wasn’t so much about her anymore. It became my chair. It represented me as well as my sister, about my journey through life, not so much about my memories of her and of my deceased mother and father. The chair is me, and judging from all the patrons over the years who have bought prints of the PBRC, the chair has become you as well. This summer has been financially and emotionally tough for me. Hell, it’s tough all over, but creating this installation has put a number of things in their proper perspective. 1) Pamela’s dead. I am not. 2) I’m still making stuff, recording music, typing words. Pamela’s ain’t doing no cross stitch no mo. And 3) I have friends and family that I love very much and they care for me too. They can talk to me and hold me and hug me and I can do the same back. Pamela, however, is in the grave, unable to humanly love and touch me, and she can’t be touched or hugged back or listened to. But maybe that’s her over there, skipping through the trees, a teenager having her whole life ahead of her, not seeing the future alcoholism, the desperate loneliness, the checkered job history, and the resentful bitterness that made a cold bed for her to lie in every night. Maybe her light-filled spirit is right here, right now, right over there, free and happy. What did you just say Pamela? “I’m fucking proud of you, bro,” says the angel ghost off my left shoulder. “I fucking love ya.” “Thanks, Pamela,” I whisper to myself. “I love you too.”

To read the Pamela’s Baby Rocking Chair book, you can buy the e-book on Amazon and on other sites, or listen to or buy the audio book on iTunes, or Spotify, or if you want to buy the real live paperback book book, contact me at www.stujenks.org. The second Pamela’s Baby Rocking Chair book, A Chair In The Wilderness, will be released sometime in 2018. Have a blessed day, y’all.

March 26, 2012

Image: "Queen Esther Baptist Church, Lancaster, Virginia" (c) 2011 Stu Jenks (Just down River Road from Victoria's house. Love that luscious red carpet. And for you nocturnals out there, it was handheld. Rare for me.)

In this time of making photos on iPhones and Macbook Pros and only looking on screens, I forget I'm a old-school guy. I make a 8 1/2 x 11 work print on archival paper of EVERY image I make. EVERY one. It's the only way, for me, to accurately check for color shift, density, composition, etc. I really like my iPad screen but it's no way to make a good print.

And I have hundreds, if not thousands, of work prints artist proofs at my studio.

If you see an image of mine on The StuBlog or on my old website or on the Fezziwig Press Store or in any of my books, there's a beautiful small print in a box somewhere, perhaps with your name on it. And since I'm organized, I can find it.

Many of you can't afford my larger prints. I understand. I don't have an extra 50 or 100 lying around either. But I do have an extra $20 for stuff I really like.

So if you see an image of mine on any of my sites or in any of my books and you want it, it's yours for $25, shipping, handling and tax included. (I believe in paying taxes, sales and otherwise.)

Just email me at my facebook page or through the StuBlog or at stujenks@gmail.com, and tell me what print you would like or just pull the jpeg and send that to me.

I was just watching the Tarhells lose today in basketball, working on images at my computer when I thought, 'I bet people don't realize I have boxes of work prints here.'

You all do now.

Love and light,

Stu

p.s. Ignore the catagories belows. The computer went wacky. Another reason why I prefer a print in the hand as opposed to an image in The Cloud.

December 07, 2011

Three editors, two proofreaders, two designers, four printers, and hours, days, weeks, months, years, lifetimes, (I know I'm overstating), of writing, traveling, shooting, editing, remembering, hiking, and more writing, shooting, and editing, but I'm not complaining. No, no, no.

And apologies for not having the dough right now, to print The Transpersonal Papers as a coffee-table book as I had originally planned. ($10,000, it would have cost. Maybe someday.) But you now can buy it, for $14.95, as an Ebook on the Apple IPad, and I expect it to be available within a couple days on the Nook and the Kindle as well.

I just looked at it on my new IPad. The photos, text and design look grand.

And as an extra surprise, Bozo In Love is now up on IBooks too, ($9.95), as well as the rest of my catalog: Flame Spirals, Hoop Dancing, and Dementia Blues, on IBooks, Nook and Kindle.

Just in time for Christmas.

And don't worry. All but The Transpersonal Papers can still be bought as a book book through Fezziwig Press. I have plenty. Just go to www.fezziwigpressonline.com, for the hardbounds and paperbacks, but go to ITunes, today, (and Kindle and Nook, soon) for the ebooks.

Heavy sigh from my third story apartment balcony. I look out onto the Tucson city lights in the valley below. Cold, dry air embraces me. I inhale deeply. Exhale.

A very good night in the desert.

Think I'll make a cup of coffee with egg nog and play some Angry Birds on my new IPad.

August 25, 2010

[I was in love with the Minimalists when I was in Art School. Now, I still understand their greatness in 20th Century Art, but I need more meat on the bones of my Art now. Less thinking, more feeling. The older I get, the more I seem to leave behind any love I have for the Really-Smart-Contemporary-Art. I'd rather see the dynamic drawing of a piece of yellow cheese by a writer friend's child, than to look at what's in most Contemporary Art galleries these days. Sorry. Don. You were great. Are great, but you leave me cold. But that's OK. There are plenty of City Mice who love your work. You don't need me.]